Our Sister Killjoy

Content Warning: This section includes discussions of anti-Black racism.

Sissie travels to England even though she has a complex relationship with it as the European power that colonized Ghana. Ghanaians have different understandings of different European countries; they sometimes conflate French colonies in Africa with France itself.

When Sissie arrives in England, she is surprised to see so many Black people. Most of them are very poor, and all of them are students. They are able to stay in England because they have received scholarships and awards, so some of them extend their studies as long as possible so that they do not have to return home. They are always badly dressed, which hurts Sissie to see. Initially, being in England makes Sissie sad, but then she starts to feel very angry.

The Black people who come to England cannot tell their families the truth of their situation, because that would mean admitting that they failed and that Europe is not actually a paradise. She considers some of the people she has met in Europe so far. One is a Scottish woman who suggests that English colonialism in Scotland was the same as in Africa. She rejects any suggestion that Scottish people were complicit in African colonialism. Another is a German-American professor who argues that Germans have been oppressed since World War I. Sissie privately contemplates the Holocaust, but says nothing to the professor. 

Sissie goes to a hotel to meet an unnamed West African friend and his relative, Kunle. She tries to talk to them about the Biafran War, which recently broke out in Nigeria, but they “are used to / Tragedy […] / The scale hardly makes a difference” (95). Instead, they want to talk about other news: one of the first successful heart transplants. A “Christian Doctor” in South Africa took the heart of a young African man who collapsed and could not be resuscitated, put it in the chest of a dying white man, and announced his success to the press. Kunle views this as a major scientific advancement, but Sissie is profoundly disturbed. The story reminds her of animal slaughter and makes her wonder whether the heart doctor sees Black people as humans or merely as tools to help white people live longer. 

Kunle hopes that this heart transplant will help break down barriers and fight racism, though he does not specify how. Sissie wonders whether the doctor experimented on other people before finally succeeding, but Kunle assures her that he only tested the procedure on dogs and cats. Sissie thinks the doctor who performed the surgery must see Africans as no better than animals. She has seen pet dogs and cats in Europe that “eat better than many many children” (99). Despite Kunle’s optimism, the heart transplants have not yet ended racism. The “Christian Doctor” has made a lot of money off his surgeries, while Black people in South Africa continue to suffer under the Apartheid system.

An unspecified time later, Kunle dies in a car crash in his home country. Sissie quotes some of the letters from home that she and other Black people in Europe often receive. In the letters, family members discuss their financial hardships and sometimes announce the deaths of loved ones. Sissie imagines or recites a letter from Kunle’s mother in which she laments not seeing her son for years. She wishes he could take care of her, as other sons are able to do even if they have not received a European education. She lists the various misfortunes that have befallen the family and asks him to send her some money, if possible. She hopes he will soon return home, as there is much work to be done. Sissie believes that Kunle, faced with such pressures, “wished he had had the courage to be a coward enough to stay forever in England” (107).

Kunle’s heart was not used in a transplant when he died. Sissie sarcastically refers to this as a “waste,” when the “Christian Doctor” could have used Kunle’s heart to keep a white person alive. Kunle’s high-quality European life insurance policy refuses to pay anything to his family.